


I Hope This Gets To You

by Duck_Life



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Coma, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Possession, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 21:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6059427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snoke's taking Rey over bit by bit. Jess tries as hard as she can to save her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Hope This Gets To You

As a child, Jessika Pava was afraid of the dark.

She used to lie awake crying or wake up screaming, making monsters out of shadows and nightmares out of nothing. Every time, her father would come and sit on the edge of her bed and tell her old war stories about heroes like Wedge Antilles or Mon Mothma.

Her favorites were about Luke Skywalker, the Jedi Knight who saved the galaxy with something as simple as love. She’d watch with rapt eyes as her father told her about the one-in-a-million shot that destroyed the Death Star, about the AT-ATs on Hoth, about the way the fearsome Darth Vader turned the tide at the last second because of Luke.

Her father died when she was fourteen, and she bought a nightlight and started reading old history books at night in his absence. Bedtime stories become studying and dreams become reality, and before long she finds herself flying X-Wings for the Resistance and dating a Jedi Knight who is, herself, prone to nightmares.

_Rey scratches another tick mark into the wall, wiping away the dust with callused fingers. The wall is covered, more lines than space now, nothing but little white lines as far as she can see._

_When she looks down, her arms are covered with them too, black marks drawn in ink, all over her body, one for each day she’s been left behind. She looks down._

_Dug into the dirt, marks stretch out and cover the ground, as far as she can see, over the entire planet._

Rey’s struggling startles Jess awake, and it doesn’t take long for her to realize that her girlfriend is having a nightmare. She jerks and twists, tangling herself in the sheets, cold sweat beading on her forehead. “Rey,” Jessika mumbles, shaking her shoulder. “Rey. Baby, wake up. You’re dreaming.” Rey doesn’t wake up, but she does become more fitful. Jess only shakes her harder. “ _Rey_. Come on. It’s okay. Wake up. Wake up.”

When Rey lets out a muffled cry, Jess honestly shakes her with everything she’s got. They’ve sparred; she knows what Rey can take. It does nothing. “Rey,” she says, heart catching in her throat. “Rey!”

Jessika half-carries, half-drags Rey down the hall, tamping down the fear pooling in her stomach. Rey’s normally a light sleeper, but she does have nightmares every once in a while. Sometimes more often than that.

She knocks on the door, not even bothering to try the control panel. She’s desperate.

After a moment, Luke Skywalker lets his door slide open, and he stands there taking in the sight of the two of them, sleep weighing down his eyes.

Jess tries to shift her grip on Rey, her eyes wide as she looks up at the old Jedi. “Something’s wrong.”

They get Rey stretched out sideways on Luke’s bed, still tossing and turning. Every now and then she mumbles something unintelligible. “Get a cold washcloth,” he says, not even looking at Jess as she runs to the bathroom. “Rey,” Luke says, shaking her lightly, but he’s sure that if Jess couldn’t wake her he won’t be able to either. He’s just hoping, blindly hoping that he’s wrong about his assumption.

Because he knows what’s wrong with her.

“Here,” Jess says, coming back with the damp washcloth. When Luke says nothing, she takes the initiative and starts blotting at Rey’s forehead with it. “So,” she says, a gentle hand on the side of her girlfriend’s head, hating the silence, “what… what is it? What’s going on with her?”

“I…” Luke says, sounding old and tired. “She’ll be okay,” he promises weakly. “She’s going to be okay.”

Jess looks at him for a long time and then returns her gaze to Rey. “You’ve seen this before,” she says. It’s not a question.

Luke does look old, and it’s not the beard, the gray hair, the lines buried in his face. It’s the years themselves. They pile on his shoulders and weigh on his eyes, and every word he says is woven with regret. Jess has wondered if he expected to die during his long exile.

Sometimes, she wonders if he planned to.

“I have seen this before,” Luke tells her. “With Kylo Ren.”

_She’s in front of Unkar Plutt’s counter once more, piling things up. It’s never enough. She gives him everything she’s found in a week, and he shakes his head. She sets her staff on the counter, and he takes it away and he shakes his head._

_She drops a pile of old parts on the counter, orange and white. She knows what they are. She knows who they are._

_Unkar Plutt sweeps BB-8’s remains from the counter and shakes his head._

“It’s Snoke,” Luke explains, pacing around his room like a madman. “It’s his method, to sway young Jedi Knights to the Dark Side. I’ve been studying while I was gone, learned… but it’s not enough,” he sighs, and spares a glance at his unconscious apprentice before resuming his pacing. “Snoke, he— he traps them in their own minds and bombards them with bad memories, bad ideas. Anything to torment them.”

“And then what?” Jess says, eyes on Rey, who’s begun to cry slightly, oblivious to the world around her. Jess wipes away her tears and tries not to cry herself. “Skywalker, then what?”

“I don’t know,” he says, sounding lost. “I only saw it happen the once. After twenty-four hours, Ben Solo woke up on his own. Never said a word. Then a month later…” His hand clenches while he relives old memories, unhealed and bloody. “A month later he slaughtered all of the padawans at the Jedi temple.”

Jess doesn’t say anything; she’s thinking. She’s wiping away the sweat from Rey’s brow as if the world depends on it. For all she fucking knows, it might as well.

“Luke,” she says, and it sounds strange. She feels like she should be calling him _sir_. “You said… Snoke attacks them with their own darkest memories.”

“Yes,” Luke says, glancing over at her. “In part, yes.”

“Except Kylo Ren grew up with a home and a family who loved him,” Jess points out, her tone stiff, her hands shaking. “Rey spent most of her life alone, abandoned on a desert planet.”

Luke brings a hand up over his mouth and doesn’t say a word for a long, long time. Rey’s eyes dart rapidly beneath her eyelids. The earliest tendrils of sunrise snake into the room through Luke’s window.

“Leia’s probably awake by now,” Luke says, sounding like he’s been run absolutely ragged. “I’ll go… maybe she’ll know…” he trails off as he walks out of the room, leaving Jess alone with a comatose Rey.

Jess wants to go and rewet the washcloth but she can’t fathom leaving Rey alone for a second, so she sets the cloth aside and brushes Rey’s damp hair out of her face with her fingers. “You’re gonna be okay,” she whispers, pressing a gentle kiss to Rey’s cheek. “You’re gonna be okay, kid. I swear.”

Leia looks torn up at the sight of Rey. Jess opens her mouth to explain, but the General waves her off. “Luke told me,” she says, going to sit on the bed by Rey’s feet. “She’s completely non-responsive,” she says. Jess is about to answer when she realizes that the General isn’t asking.

When Luke comes back into his room, Jess has a question for him. “Can she hear me?” she asks, watching Rey’s eyes flicker.

Luke shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says.

“Use the Force,” Jess grates out, her voice brittle, bitter. She shouldn’t be speaking to him like this, she knows, but she’s desperate. She can’t help it. And it doesn’t seem like Luke can help her at all.

“She’s blocked, somehow,” Luke says. “I’m trying to read her, but there’s…” He doesn’t say it, but Leia and Jess both hear it. _There’s nothing there._

“Okay,” Leia says, and she stands up and she flattens her palms over her skirt and she smooths her dress down. “Okay,” she says again. “I’m going to go talk to Ackbar. And we’ll… we’ll figure something out. We’ll figure this out. We will.” It sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself than Luke or Jessika.

She leaves, and after a moment Luke starts to follow her. At the last second, he turns back. “Pava,” he says. “You could always give it a shot. Talking to her, I mean.”

He leaves.

Jessika Pava is twenty-six years old, but with Skywalker and the General gone she feels very much in need of a proper adult. “Hey,” she whispers, and she leans forward to take Rey’s hand. “I’m right here,” she says. It doesn’t seem like any part of Rey notices, but she tries anyway. “I’m not gonna leave your side. Okay?” She’s crying for real now but she doesn’t care. “I’m gonna be right here. Until you wake up. And you gotta wake up, okay?”

She stays this way for two hours, exhaustion weighing her down as she just keeps murmuring into Rey’s ears, trying to calm her even as the other girl blindly thrashes around the bed. Jess wonders what she’s thinking about. She wonders if she even wants to know.

As daylight trickles in, so do Poe and Finn. They’ve been sharing a room lately; Jess figures they woke up at the same time and learned the news. “Is she any better?” Poe says, sliding into a chair behind Jess. Finn stands as if he’s frozen in the center of the room, eyes on Rey.

“No,” Jess says, and coughs— her voice is so accustomed to whispering. “Pretty much the same.” From his seat, Poe absently reaches out a hand and combs his fingers through Rey’s loose hair.

“Did… did Skywalker tell you more?” Finn says, the words stuttering out one by one. He looks like a wreck. “He just told us that she… that she can’t wake up.”

“Um,” Jess says, and swallows. She honestly thinks that she might be all cried out at this point. “Um, yeah. It’s Snoke.”

“ _Snoke_ ,” Poe mutters, and swears in Ubese.

“Yeah,” Jess continues in a small voice. “And he’s sort of… trapped her in her own head. Attacking her with… with nightmares, and flashbacks…” She blinks rapidly and goes to squeeze Rey’s hand again. “I’m so sorry,” she says to Rey. “I’m so sorry, Rey. The guys are here. Please wake up. Please don’t stay away so long.”

Finn and Poe meet eyes, simultaneously feeling as if they’re intruding on something private and as if the whole world is watching the room, watching the last of the Jedi battle for her life.

_She’s on D’Qar, wandering the hangar as everyone rushes around her. As hard as she tries she can’t pick out faces in the crowd; they all blur together, shouting and bustling._

_And then finally, across the tarmac she sees them— Poe and Finn, standing shoulder to shoulder and looking at her. Her friends. Her family._

_Rey runs to them but Finn stumbles back when she goes to hug him. “What are you doing?”_

_She frowns. “I missed you.”_

_“We were better off before you came along,” Poe tells her, voice calm and friendly as ever. “I wish you would leave again.”_

_“Honestly,” Finn tacks on, “I don’t know why I ever saved you from Starkiller. I wish you’d just blown up with the rest of it.” His tone is also friendly, normal. Rey feels sick to her stomach. The sky looks green. “I should have just left you,” Finn says. “I wanted to.”_

Leia walks in, looking exhausted. “We’ve organized a strategy,” she says, as if the problem is galactic and large-scale, something they can fight, not something invisibly attacking Rey right before their eyes. “A volunteer squadron of X-Wing pilots will leave as soon as possible. We’re launching a direct attack on Snoke.”

Jess looks between Rey and the General, lost. “I…” she says, looking torn. “I can’t leave her.” It’s clear she wants to be a part of that squadron, fighting Snoke head on.

As a child, Jessika Pava was afraid of the dark. People who knew this about her were surprised when she chose pilot as a career— all that time flying  through the dark void of space. She’s never seen it that way.

On the ground, clouds often obscure suns, moons, and stars, and she can get claustrophobic in the whole of a planet. Out there, piloting, there’s always a star to find and to follow. No darkness is total. She’s always had the pinpricks of light to find and to remind herself that space is not dark at all, but full of life and light.

Being on the ground has never felt more wrong than it does right now.

“I’ll go,” Poe swears. “I’ll lead the squadron.” He leans forward and puts a comforting hand on Jessika’s shoulder. As he speaks, Luke shows up over his sister’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” Poe promises Jess. “It’s me. You trust me to get this right?”

She swallows hard and nods, adjusting her hold on Rey’s hand. “Go,” she says. “Go get that son of a bitch.”

“I’ll go too,” Finn says, shoulders back. He’s been training with Poe and picked up flying quickly enough. He’s not perfect, but this is an all-hands-on-deck situation if there ever were one. “I’ll…” He looks at Rey and takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll go too.”

“Okay,” Leia says, nodding. “Good. Head to the hangar to get ready.” She leaves, edging around Luke to do so.

For a moment there’s stagnant silence in the room, and then Finn leans down over Rey and gently presses his lips against her forehead. “I’ll come back,” he promises, and he can imagine her doing this for him as he lay comatose in the infirmary. “I’ll come back.”

Poe squeezes Jessika’s shoulder and then goes to leave the room with Finn. At the last moment, Luke catches Poe on the sleeve.

“Listen,” he says, and his voice is low but it’s not so low that Jessika can’t hear him. “I know this isn’t the most Jedi thing to say. So I would appreciate it if you kept it between us. If you get a shot at Snoke,” he says, “kill him.”

Poe nods curtly and leaves the room with Finn, leaving Jess alone with Luke Skywalker and whatever the hell is still left of Rey.

She thinks Luke might be watching her, but just as likely he’s staring aimlessly into space. “You know, when I was a kid,” she says to him softly, not taking her eyes of Rey, “you were my hero.”

“Hm,” he says, folding his arms. “Would’ve thought you were a smarter kid.”

_Rey’s on Ahch-To again with Master Skywalker, stacking rocks with her mind, his eyes on her. “You’ll never be good enough,” he warns her, and the rocks tumble down. “Why are you here?”_

_She tries again, she tries again, stacking the rocks over and over and over again, and every time he tells her how impossible it is for her._

_When she finally gives up, Han Solo is there. “Why did you let me die?”_

The volunteer squadron leaves. Jessika’s thoughts are with them and her heart is buried in the girl lying prone in front of her.

Luke wanders off somewhere, like he’s been kicked out of his own room. Jess thought he’d stayed behind to help with Rey, but he can’t even be in the room with her. Leia floats in and out of Luke’s quarters, occasionally running a cool hand over Rey’s forehead like a worried mother.

Jess tries to keep up a steady stream of murmured reassurances, but her silences become longer and longer. “I love you,” she whispers over Rey, pressing light kisses to the top of her head, to her cheek. “I love you, I love you, I love you, _please wake up_.”

The thing is, she doesn’t know what might happen if— _when_ Rey does wake up. Because Kylo Ren, apparently, went through the same thing and when he woke up he never went back to how he was. He became the monster he is now.

And what would that mean for Rey? Would she wake up different? Would she wake up a Sith? How would Jess deal with that?

“I don’t care,” she promises Rey, running a thumb up and down the side of Rey’s limp hand. “I don’t care how you come back, Rey. Just come back.”

_The forest is thick and cold, snow flurrying down faster than Rey can see it. She’s lost, she knows she’s lost. She wanders, hearing distant noises muffled by the snow._

_And then she turns a corner and Kylo Ren’s there. “Come with me,” he tells her, extending a hand. “We’re the same. We’re exactly the same.”_

_She shakes her head, she stumbles. She runs away, runs and runs and runs until she skids to a stop. There he is, right in front of her._

_“Hello, dear,” Snoke says._

They don’t get any updates from the squadron, but Jessika trusts Poe. She doesn’t really have another option.

Six hours before she’s supposed to wake up, Rey’s eyes snap open.

“Oh!” Jess gasps, leaning over her. “Rey, Rey, it’s okay. Hey, I’m here. I’m right here. It’s okay.”

Rey blinks a few times, shifts on the bed. When Jess tries to reach out to her she jerks away, her limbs moving with robotic efficiency. “Rey?”

When Rey looks at her, Jessika’s heart drops like a weight. Something’s wrong.

As a child, Jessika Pava was afraid of the dark. She was a brave kid, though, who grew up to be a brave adult, and bravery never means an absence of fear. It means getting through what scares you. It means finding that pinprick of light even in the darkest night.

Rey’s eyes are black, blacker than the void of space, pitch black without even a speck of light. “Jessika,” she breathes, and she smiles, and she’s never been further from herself. “I’m all better now.”

_The desert stretches out forever and ever without end, and Rey stands with her feet scorched by sun and sand, eyes scanning the sky. Its flawless blue remains unmarred by any spacecraft. The dunes are empty. There is no one._

_“They’re never coming back for you,” Jess says from behind her, and she spins to see her girlfriend watching her with some kind of cruel pity. “No one’s ever coming back for you. Why would anyone want to?”_

“Rey,” Jess says, backing up. “Rey, I don’t know what’s going on but just stay still, okay? I’m gonna get Luke in here—”

“Oh, right, Luke,” she says, her voice lilting and beautiful and _wrong_. This looks nothing like what Luke said was supposed to happen. The black eyes, the _weirdness_. It’s all wrong. “Your _hero_.” She sneers and pushes out with the Force, slamming Jess against the wall. She can feel the pressure on her throat; she gasps but no sound comes out. “Go ahead. See if your great hero can save you now.”

The gears grind in Jess’s mind, rust flaking off. What she knows about black eyes, what she knows about the Dark Side. A worst-case scenario she’s never even heard of happening. Her mouth works but she can’t say a word; her breath is constricted. Figuring the bastard is rooting around in her head anyway, she just thinks at him. _Snoke. You’re possessing her_.

“Smart one,” Rey— _Snoke—_ says, stalking toward her with all the time in the world. “Not smart enough to make a difference, I’m afraid.”

_Let her go._

“Oh, well if you put it like _that_ ,” he grins. Something about watching him move Rey around like a puppet makes Jessika’s skin crawl. “I like her. She’s strong, you know. So much power… and no idea what to do with it.”

 _She knows what to do with it, asshole_. She can’t even talk but she does what she’s always done, she hides behind words. There’s no cockpit to hide away in so she hides behind words. _And she’s a hell of a lot stronger than you_.

“Is she?” Snoke says, twisting Rey’s mouth in a smirk. “Then why would she let me do this?” Rey’s hand smacks Jess across the face _hard._ And again. “If she’s so strong, why isn’t she stopping me, Jessika?”

In his physical assault of her, he apparently abandons the Force because she drops from the wall; the pressure on her throat disappears. She screams for Luke but her voice cracks. Snoke kicks her in the ribs with Rey’s bare foot. Jess tries to retaliate, getting a firm grip around Rey’s knees and toppling Snoke. Fierce, ferocious, she leaps on top of Snoke and presses him into the floor, trying to ignore the look in Rey’s eyes. _It’s not Rey_.

Leaning over Snoke, Jess knows that her upper hand is only an illusion. She knows that Snoke can attack her again with the Force whenever he wants. He’s goading her. He’s waiting to see how far she’ll go. How much she’ll hurt Rey.

Jess remembers the stories about Luke Skywalker that her father used to tell her. And she remembers her favorite— the one about him confronting Darth Vader, fighting him, and then at the last moment tossing his lightsaber away. Saving his father. Showing him mercy, showing him love, despite everything.

Jess remembers Luke telling Poe to kill Snoke, without even a speck of mercy. Poe must be out there right now, trying to get that one lucky shot at Snoke, no idea that Snoke is here, now. Poe’s attacking Snoke with everything he’s got and Snoke is hiding away inside of Rey, and Poe’s still firing because Luke Skywalker told him to.

Well. Luke may have abandoned his own philosophy. Jess doesn’t have to.

“Rey,” she says quietly, easing back from the girl on the floor. She balances back on the balls of her feet, trying to find her girlfriend in Snoke’s glare. “Rey, it’s gonna be okay, alright?” Snoke shoves her across the floor with the Force and she slams into the wall. “Rey,” she calls out again, thinking about the hours she spent holding Rey’s hand and letting her know that she was safe, that she was loved, that she wasn’t alone. “I’m not leaving you.”

_“Of course I’m going to leave you,” Jess tells her, Jakku sunlight bouncing off her hair and the perfect angles of her face. “Everyone leaves you. Why should I be any different?”_

_Rey blinks, curls her hands into fists at her sides. “No,” she says, her cluttered mind sifting through all that’s been happening to her. “No.”_

_“Oh, yes,” Jessika smirks. “I don’t care about you. Rey, I_ never _cared about you.”_

Snoke looms over Jess, choking her with the Force again. “So sweet,” he says, curling Rey’s lip in a cruel sneer. “You think you can save her with, what? Love?”

Jess doesn’t speak; she can’t. She doesn’t have much of an argument, anyway. She can’t fight a Sith lord. She had hoped that Rey, maybe, might be able to. Now she’s just hoping that Rey will make it out of this.

Snoke chokes her until she sees spots, easing up every now and then just to keep her from passing out, so he can keep up hurting her. “She’ll wake holding your corpse,” he promises. Jessika’s mouth moves but no sound comes out. Snoke lessens his grip, lets her speak. “What was that?”

She speaks, hoarse and weak. “Will she be okay?”

Rey has her reins pulled by a monster and she’s never looked more frightening, and Jess loves her, loves her, loves her. “Who cares?”

“I do.” There’s no malice, no ulterior motive. She just cares, genuinely, wholly.

_The acrid heat of the desert is unforgiving._

_Jessika Pava isn’t._

Rey falls to her knees, coughing, and Jess feels the pressure from her throat vanish. Without even thinking she rolls forward and reaches out for Rey, pulling her tightly into her arms. She doesn’t need to see Rey’s eyes. She knows.

When Luke finally shows up about fifteen minutes later they’re still on the floor, Jess rocking Rey back and forth gently. They might both be crying, or maybe just one of them; they’re so tied together they can’t even tell.

Maybe Luke’s going to ask what happened or maybe he’s going to let them know that reports are pouring in that Snoke collapsed before Resistance forces could reach him. It doesn’t really matter now— Jess can smell Rey’s shampoo and feel her chest rise and fall and she knows that Rey’s awake and okay because she keeps whispering in Jessika’s ear, “I’m here, I’m right here, I’m alright.”

The sun begins to set.


End file.
